This invention relates to the development of an improved low speed heavy-duty antifriction bearing which is repeatedly subjected to heavy impact loads.
For many years one such application for bearings of this type has been the mast guide of forklift trucks. The history of bearing failure problems in this application has shown that failures are rarely due to fatigue from running but are characteristically broken outer races which are continually subjected to shock loading. Shock loading happens every time the fork truck bumps into something solid with the fork.
In the prior art, the approach to solving this problem has been to make the race members, or at least the outer race member larger and heavier in cross section. This has reduced the incidence of broken race members but has increased the cost of the bearings without completely solving the broken outer race member problem.